Outside her window, spring is struggling to break through the grip winter has had on the Bitterroot Valley for the last five months. It’s a slow battle. In the distance, the Bitterroot Mountains are partly hidden by another squall.

Morrell has worked in the Ravalli County planning office for more than a year. She started as a planner, but now she has a new title: rural resource planner.

The new title gives only the vaguest nod to the complexities of her job.

Ravalli County is in the process of baseline countywide zoning. It’s one of the top priorities of what is called the Countywide Planning Enhancement Program.

Citizen planning committees are working within the seven county school districts. Their job is to recommend to the county what zoning should look like in their communities. The county, in turn, has hired Clarion Associates, a consulting firm out of Colorado, to take the planning committee’s recommendations and develop the zoning maps and regulations.

But also included in the CPEP is Morrell’s main focus: developing a rural resource planning program.

Already encompassed in the program are things like the open lands program, streamside setbacks, and conservation easement reviews. Morrell is the planning department member assigned to the Ravalli County Open Lands Board and the Streamside Setbacks Committee. She also devotes time to the Right to Farm and Ranch board.

Many people consider most of Ravalli County rural in nature. Ranches and farms still dot the county’s landscape. Just travel the Eastside Highway some summer evening and you will likely encounter a tractor or two and you will see farmers in the field doing everything from moving sprinkler pipe to cutting hay.

In a recent study, Larry Swanson, economist from the O’Connor Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Missoula, pointed to the importance of agriculture to the Bitterroot Valley, Morrell said.

“Ag and rural areas in the valley are one of the reasons people move here,” Morrell said, referring to the study. “It’s one of the reasons people stay here.”

The desire for many people, through the zoning process, is to protect the rural way of life, she said. But the worry from the agriculture community is that zoning will devalue their land or keep them from developing it. If that were to happen, then farmers could be kept from gaining any monetary value from their land, which is often their largest asset.

Though studies indicate land will likely maintain its value with zoning, no one is certain, Morrell said.

But as far as protecting the right of farmers and ranchers to develop their land, the focus of the rural resource planning program will be to develop tools for them to use that compliment zoning, said Karen Hughes, director of the Ravalli County planning department.

The idea being that zoning must be fair to all landowners, she said. The county doesn’t want to keep farmers from gaining value out of their land. Rather, through zoning there may be ways to make that process easier.

But just what those tools are and how they will be offered is still an unknown, Morrell said.

It’s early in the process and part of Morrell’s job now is to reach out to the agriculture community in the county to find out their concerns and their needs.

“A lot of what we hear from the rural and ag community is make it easier for us to do the right thing,” Morrell said.

The right thing is tricky to define.

“You’ll find a difference of opinion depending on which side of the fence you happen to be standing on,” said Dan Huls, a local dairy owner and long-standing member of the county’s Right to Farm and Ranch Board and Planning Board.

“Part of what we want to do is explore in this community what it means to do the right thing,” Hughes said.

Many farmers and ranchers feel like they’re already doing the right thing, Morrell said. They see themselves as good stewards of the land.

And this makes sense. If the beauty of the rural parts of the county is what draws people here, and the farmers and ranchers are stewards of that rural beauty, it stands to reason they’ve done an excellent job protecting it.

But with the growth in Ravalli County comes the added pressure to develop.

It’s not that farmers want to turn their ground into major subdivisions, but what people have a hard time understanding is that land is often a farmer’s biggest asset, said Huls.

And that’s where the fear starts, he said.

Imagine if a man had a savings account he was investing in for the day he retired. Then all of a sudden the government came to him and said it was going to put restrictions on what he could do with the money.

That’s not exactly what zoning would do, but that’s the fear, Huls said. Government regulation doesn’t have a good reputation with the agriculture community.

“The last thing that somebody in rural America wants to have is somebody knock on the door and say, ‘Hi, I’m from the government and I’m here to help you,’ because it’s usually not that way,” he said.

But with countywide zoning and the rural resources planning program, it is different.

“The county, I think, has actually gone out of their way in many instances to embrace and engage the ag community,” Huls said.

Many farmers are facing the fact that their children either can’t or won’t continue the farming operation.

“Ag has struggled so much in the last few decades that we’ve lost a whole generation already and we’re about to lose another one,” he said. “Many of the farmers are at retirement age and there’s nobody there to take their place and there’s nobody there to sign up to do this duty.”

Farmers and ranchers need a way to get money from their property, he said. It doesn’t mean that they want to sell off the whole spread, but if the county could find a way to enable farmers to develop portions of their property through a streamlined process, that would go a long way to assuaging their worries about zoning.

“If a farmer finds the need to develop some of his property – if the proper incentives are in place which will allow him to develop a portion of the more unsuitable ground into smaller lot sizes and to streamline that process – it would be a very viable and accepted option in the ag community,” Huls said.

These incentives are a focus of the rural resource planning program, Hughes said. But they need to accompany baseline countywide zoning.

“Even within the current proposal is to do density-based zoning instead of lot-sized zoning,” she said. “So in there is some feasibility to cluster development.”

With density zoning, farmers could do as Huls indicated – cluster homes on portions of their farms that aren’t as productive.

Along with density zoning could come incentives for cluster development, Hughes said. These incentives could be streamlining the subdivision review process or a density bonus that would allow a higher density for cluster development than permitted by the zoning.

Right now the subdivision review process is painful, she said.

“It’s not a healthy process for anyone to have to go through,” Hughes said.

Hopefully, zoning will make the process easier.

Huls agrees. Right now subdividing a portion of your farm could take years and thousands of dollars to accomplish. For the agriculture community, that’s not acceptable, he said.

Another incentive tool would be transferring development rights, Hughes said. This would essentially mean landowners could sell the rights to develop their property to someone else who is developing another piece of ground. This would give the landowner money for the development value of the land, while keeping it intact and open.

Already in the mix is the widely supported open lands bond, Huls said. Voters passed this bond in 2006; in the same election voters passed emergency zoning, which essentially forced the county to embark on the countywide zoning process.

The open lands bond would essentially pay landowners for the development rights to their property.

The way the open lands bond works is landowners interested in the program would have to work with a land trust to develop a conservation easement, which is a voluntary contract that restricts the development of the property in perpetuity. The easement can be tailored to the specific landowner and situation. It can accommodate some development and allow the current uses of the land to continue.

The value of the easement is essentially the difference in the value of the land with development rights and without them. The landowner, in most cases, donates a portion of this value. The land trust will also look for other funding sources to compensate the landowner for the easement value, like state and federal grant programs.

Then the land trust and landowner take the project to the open lands board. The board decides whether or not to recommend the county commissioners issue bond money to the landowner for the remaining value of the easement.

The great thing about the open lands bond is that it’s public money, Huls said. The citizens of Ravalli County, in passing the bond, decided to tax themselves in order to protect open lands, agriculture, water quality and wildlife habitat.

“That was a pat on the back for the farmers of Ravalli County, I think,” he said.

But the bottom line, Huls said, is that the agriculture community has to get involved with the zoning process.

“The best thing that they can do to protect themselves is be involved in that process and have their voices heard from the very beginning,” he said.

And now is the time to speak up, Hughes said. Though the process seems to be going fast, the county is still working on engaging the farming and ranching community in the county. But to ensure they get things right for farmers and ranchers, the planning department needs to know what they need, she said.

Morrell has been making the rounds, speaking not only to county boards, but also to local gatherings and events.

“I learn what I can and talk to people as much as I can,” she said. “I’m happy to take any invites to speak to ag groups.”

To contact Morrell, call the county planning department at 375-6530.

Forest Service purchases key piece of wildlife habitat

By Greg Lemon

The Bitterroot National Forest got a little bigger in January.

Tucked away in the hills north of Skalkaho Creek was a 160-acre chunk of prime wildlife habitat that up until two years ago was private property. Now it’s officially part of the Bitterroot National Forest.

The land acquisition is the culmination of two years of work by local sportsmen groups, conservation organizations, the state of Montana and the Trust For Public Lands, said Roylene Gaul, realty specialist and lands program manager for the Bitterroot National Forest.

John Vore, a local Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wildlife biologist, heard about the land when it came on the market about two years ago.

He knew the land was valuable for wintering deer and elk, not to mention the resident bighorn sheep herd, which used the ground year around.

“There is the potential for something like that to be developed,” Vore said. “Even if a person put one home up there it’d be right smack dab in the middle of really good stuff. Once it’s developed it will never be wildlife habitat again.”

So Vore took a proposal before the Montana Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which was created, in part, to provide money for public land acquisitions.

He also notified the Forest Service, which was interested in the property, primarily because it was completely surrounded by Forest Service ground, Gaul said. The agency has been systematically working for several years to purchase small, private inholdings like the one in Brennan Gulch.

The Forest Service approached the Trust For Public Lands, a national land trust with a Montana office in Bozeman, to help secure the land while the agency worked on getting federal funds for the purchase.

The Montana Fish and Wildlife Foundation donated $60,000 toward the purchase of the land and TPL put up the remaining $254,000 to hold while the Forest Service went through its lengthy process of allocating money toward the purchase.

Along with the money from TPL and the state, support came from local groups like the Ravalli County Fish and Wildlife Association and the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep.

Tom Powers, president of the Montana FNAWS chapter, saw right away the value of the land for the local bighorn sheep and local sportsmen. Montana FNAWS offered $10,000 toward the land purchase, but ultimately that money wasn’t needed.

“It’s a good deal for everybody because it’s made the land public now and it will be secured as public land forever,” Powers said.

The federal money came through the congressionally managed Land and Water Conservation Fund, which was established by Congress in 1964 to help acquire public lands, Gaul said.

“It’s really a neat little piece of property,” said Vore. “It’s fantastic for wildlife and fantastic for people all the way around.”

Violence over zoning process a growing concern

By Michael Howell

Karen Hughes, Director of the Ravalli County Planning Department, addressed the County Commissioners at a meeting on Monday about her growing concerns over potential violence in relation to the countywide zoning process.

Hughes first made her concerns evident in a recent e-mail to Deputy County Attorney Karen Mahar. In the February 29 e-mail, Hughes noted that countywide zoning was heating up “and the typical rhetoric and language that indicates discontent that we hear out in community meetings seems to be increasing.” She noted that crowd sizes were increasing as well and attributed it, in part, to discussions and rallying going on “behind the scenes that is building momentum for a general antizoning/antiregulation/antigovernment sentiment.” Hughes speculated that there would be a rise in participation as pro-planning folks responded to the growing anti-planning movement.

Hughes expressed concern about the combination of factors, the growth in inflammatory and threatening remarks, and the increased crowd sizes combined with an apparent behind the scenes organized campaign.

“We don’t really want to overreact or underreact,” she wrote, “but it is so hard to know where that line is and I guess we’d rather be safe than sorry.” As a result, she said, the planning staff is increasingly feeling the need to notify law enforcement when faced with a meeting at a hot spot like Darby. At the last Darby meeting on February 28, where there has usually only been about 10 people in attendance, about 80 people showed up.

“I think we need to be thinking as a County about security issues and I am very concerned about putting my staff in harm’s way,” wrote Hughes.

She included in her e-mail several specific examples from the staff that raised concerns, including a meeting at which a man stated that the planning staff should all be hung and that he wanted to start with her first. She cited comments from other meetings that “heads will roll” and “there will be blood” and “they should be lynched.” She said that she had been reminded frequently of the violent history between government and citizens in Ravalli County and told that she should expect similar events to occur. Several other particular incidents were recounted.

Hughes referred to “the growing dissatisfaction among the people that seems to be translating into the synergy of a mob,” and “Generally, there seems to be building an atmosphere of intimidation and rallying amongst the anti-zoning constituency.” She said an increasing number of people are coming to the meetings with what seems to be the sole intent of disrupting things.

At Monday’s meeting with the Commissioners, County Attorney George Corn noted that the county has a policy in place concerning violence in the work place and that it applies to county employees who are working outside the courthouse.

County Human Resources Director Skip Rosenthal said that threatening or intimidating behavior towards county personnel was not acceptable. He said that his position was that county personnel could not be placed at risk either in the courthouse or elsewhere while on the job. He suggested that the problem be “nipped in the bud.” He said that any threatening or intimidating remarks should be addressed immediately, that the name of the person making the threats should be taken and the incident reported and then investigated. He said that the meeting might even be suspended.

Commissioner Kathleen Driscoll stated that she had attended a state-sponsored session on bullying and was concerned that bullying could be used to stop a legitimate public process.

Corn noted that the countywide zoning process was a contentious issue and would evoke strong emotions since so much is at stake.

“But when it crosses the line into threats we need to act,” he said. He said that any person making a threat needed to be put on the spot right away and identified.”

He advocated attendance of the zoning meetings by the County Commissioners. He said that their presence and input was a strong influence on the demeanor displayed at the meetings. He said that a balance had to be struck between the right of the public to participate and threats to safety.

“The commissioners’ presence certainly helps to strike that balance,” he said.

Rosenthal said that the policy of not accepting any threats or intimidation should be stated at the meetings. If it happens, the individual needs to be confronted and identified immediately and reported to authorities who should follow up with an inquiry. He said eventually an individual could be denied access to the meetings. The county has done that in the past.

Deputy County Attorney Karen Mahar noted that a policy was in place and should be reviewed by all concerned. She noted that a plan should also be in place for employee’s response, a form for reporting threats should be available and a plan for processing and responding to the reports. She said that training of the employees should also be done. Undersheriff Kevin McConnell is willing to do the training upon request, she said.

Planning Director Karen Hughes, asked what she considered an acceptable response to her concerns would be, said that the state’s memo on Preventing Workplace Violence was good information and should be distributed to all personnel. She said that every department should also take advantage of the Undersheriff’s training sessions, and that the commissioners’ presence at the zoning meetings was also important.

“We’ve got a good policy,” she stated, “if it is implemented and enforced.”

County settles subdivision lawsuit

By Michael Howell

The Ravalli County Commissioners agreed to an out of court settlement with Marlin and Joshua Powell on Monday that gives preliminary plat approval to the Hamilton Heights subdivision. The Powells first applied for the 20-lot subdivision on 44.24 acres located about 4.5 miles southeast of Corvallis in November of 2006. The Commissioners denied the subdivision application at a meeting on September 13, 2007 and the developers subsequently filed suit in Ravalli County District Court challenging that denial.

In their denial of the subdivision the commissioners cited unmitigated problems with the road accessing the subdivision, with the loss of agricultural land of statewide importance, and potentially negative impacts to agricultural water users. But attorney Alan McCormick, who was representing the county in the case, told the commissioners on Monday that the developers could “arguably” win their case on at least two of those issues and that they were agreeable to mitigating the third. He recommended that the county settle with the Powells under the terms offered. That would include approval of the subdivision under a set of conditions originally proposed by the County planning staff and acceptance of a $500 per lot fee to be donated to the Open Lands Board to mitigate impacts on farmland of statewide importance.

McCormick told the commissioners that the developers had proposed a road that met all the state and county regulations and that the commissioners were on shaky ground in denying the subdivision on the grounds that it did not meet additional safety requirements that have no basis in the law or the regulations. He also noted that the subdivision review criteria concerning impacts on agricultural water users was aimed at protecting the rights of other downstream users from negative effects. But the commissioners’ expressed concerns with the subdivision had to do with agricultural use within the subdivision itself, not its effects on other users. Without any regulations addressing such internal uses and with a letter from the irrigation district approving the subdivision plans, he said the developers “arguably” could win their case on that issue as well.

With respect to the loss of farmland of statewide importance, while the county did have a good argument, it was also arguable that they did not give the developers sufficient chance to mitigate the problem. He said that it was not appropriate to deny a subdivision for effects that could be mitigated by conditions, if the developer was willing to do the mitigation. As part of the settlement agreement the developers were agreeable to paying $500 per lot to be donated to the Open Lands Board, for potential purchase of other farmland to offset the loss. This was determined to apply to four of the proposed lots.

Commissioner James Rokosch expressed concern about the settlement agreement. He claimed to be unaware during the settlement negotiations that the settlement would implement the conditions placed upon the subdivision by the planning staff and not the conditions arrived at during negotiations during the hearing. He was particularly concerned about the $250 per lot donation for the school districts since a higher amount was agreed upon at the public hearing.

McCormick explained that since the subdivision was denied that the mitigations negotiated at the public hearing were never adopted. Deputy County Attorney Alex Beal stated that the issue was discussed in settlement agreement meetings but perhaps Commissioner Rokosch had not attended that particular session.

An initial motion by Commissioner Greg Chilcott to approve the settlement agreement failed to gain a second as Commissioner Rokosch and Commissioner Kathleen Driscoll were inclined to postpone the decision until absent Commissioners Alan Thompson and Carlotta Grandstaff could be in attendance in case they, too, had a misconception about the mitigation conditions. But after a brief recess in which both the developers and the commissioners consulted with their respective attorneys, Chilcott renewed his motion to approve the settlement agreement and it gained unanimous approval.

FlatIron Ranch analysis presented to Hamilton city council

By Greg Lemon

Some issues with infrastructure still need to be worked through, but if Hamilton annexes the proposed FlatIron Ranch development, it will provide a net surplus in tax revenues to city coffers.

“You will have a $300,000 surplus in the general fund as a result of FlatIron Ranch,” said Adam Orens, economist with BBC Research and Consulting out of Denver.

Orens presented his fiscal impact analysis of FlatIron Ranch to a work session of the Hamilton city council last Wednesday. He was joined by representatives from HDR Engineering from Missoula, who looked at the infrastructure impacts of the development.

FlatIron Ranch is a large housing development proposed east of Hamilton. The development would have 622 residential lots on 494 acres. FlatIron developer, Ken Madden, petitioned for annexation back in October 2006, said Hamilton city planner, Dennis Stranger.

The city asked Madden for money to fund preliminary analysis on the effects the project would have on Hamilton’s infrastructure and budget. Madden provided the city with about $33,000, which was then used to hire consultants to perform the analysis. Wednesday night’s work session was the first chance the city council had to look over the results of the analysis and ask the consultants questions.

Dan Harmon, of HDR Engineering first presented the impact FlatIron Ranch could have on Hamilton’s water, sewer and transportation systems.

Harmon’s analysis looked at FlatIron at full build-out, which could take between 10 and 20 years, Harmon said.

First, he talked about water.

Hamilton has a firm capacity to pump a little more than 5 million gallons of water per day. The average use is about 1.1 million gallons per day, with peak use at about 3 million gallons per day, Harmon said.

FlatIron Ranch would require an additional 200,000 to 540,000 gallons a day on average and peak days respectively.

Hamilton also has adequate storage capacity to serve FlatIron Ranch, he said. However, to give proper fire protection to FlatIron Ranch, the city would need more storage capacity and a booster station to get adequate pressure to the development, he said.

The city currently has a one million gallon storage facility and plans to increase storage capacity to two million gallons by 2020, Harmon said.

The hitch in the water situation is a bill passed during last year’s legislative session, which closed the Bitterroot River basin for new groundwater appropriation without study and mitigation.

“There is the ability to pump water from the ground without affecting surface water, but you have to prove that,” Harmon said.

Hamilton has water rights for about 4 million gallons per day, Harmon said. He suggested that if the city were to annex FlatIron Ranch, they look to acquire the development’s water rights, which would give the city more access to groundwater.

“If you don’t try and capture and add (water) rights as you bring property in, I think that’s going to be a mistake,” Harmon said.

In terms of the impact the development would have on Hamilton’s sewer system, the city has the capacity, from a liquid standpoint, to accommodate FlatIron Ranch, but it doesn’t have the capacity for processing the solids, he said.

The development could tie into the sewer line servicing the area near the Hamilton High School. This line would be a gravity line and wouldn’t require a lift station.

As far as treating the solid sewer waste, the city has secured funding to update its treatment plant to handle more solids, Harmon said. This upgrade should be done within the next two years.

“When those improvements are done … capacity will be restored for a considerable amount of time,” Harmon said.

Brian Ray, of HDR, presented the transportation portion of the study.

The two main access points to FlatIron Ranch would be from Tammany Lane and Golf Course Road.

Ray recommended turn signals on Highway 93 at the intersection with Golf Course Road and a separate westbound turning lane on Golf Course Road at the same intersection.

He also recommended further analysis to see if a stoplight would be required at the intersection of Golf Course Road and Grantsdale Road.

It may also be necessary to address congestion problems at the intersections of Golf Course Road and Kurtz Lane and Daly Avenue.

The traffic impact study predicted that 39 percent of the traffic from FlatIron would go through the intersection of Tammany Lane and Eastside Highway. Though the study didn’t recommend any particular improvements to that intersection, Ray suggested it would be necessary to study it further to see if any were warranted.

The infrastructure analysis also looked at the potential for non-motorized routes connecting FlatIron Ranch with the urban center of Hamilton. This essentially means walking and bike paths.

“There’s a focus of getting people out of their cars and using different modes of transportation,” Harmon said. “We think that needs to be considered much higher on the list as the development of the city of Hamilton goes forward.”

Harmon’s initial estimate is that non-motorized paths could be built down Golf Course Road and Tammany Lane for about $1 million.

The fiscal impact of the FlatIron Ranch for the city of Hamilton was pretty straightforward, though the analysis to arrive at the conclusion was complex, said Adam Orens.

Basically, Orens looked at potential tax revenues garnered from homes and property in the development and offset them with the cost to the city for providing services such as police and fire protection, and road maintenance.

“The FlatIron Ranch will provide a fiscal surplus for the city of Hamilton,” Orens said.

The analysis assumed the value of the homes built at FlatIron Ranch would be between $200,000 and $580,000. The commercial space, which is slated to be about 29,600 square feet, would be worth about $5.9 million. The total projected value of the development would be about $254 million, according to Orens’ study.

The development, at build-out, would generate about $675,000 per year for Hamilton’s general fund. This is offset by an estimated cost for services from the city of $383,000, Orens said.

In addition, FlatIron will generate about $4.8 million in impact fees and $1.8 million from building permits, he said.

These figures stay the same whether the development is built out over 10 or 20 years.

“Your costs will come online at the same pace as the revenues,” Orens said.

Dennis Stranger also presented an economic analysis done by Ann Adair, senior economist from Montana State University–Billings.

Her analysis basically showed that the jobs generated by the construction of the development and the new residents would provide an overall economic benefit to Hamilton. For instance, she estimated the development would generate about 200 jobs annually during the construction period, Stranger said.

“There’s a very positive economic effect of the FlatIron project on the Hamilton area,” Stranger said, summing up Adair’s analysis.

The consultants then took questions from the city council and the public in attendance.

Councilor Al Mitchell was curious if the annexation of FlatIron would affect the city’s ability to annex other property.

Not likely, replied Stranger.

“The pace of development is going to determine the capacity, for example, of the wastewater treatment plant,” he said.

However, if a future development was going to force the city to expand facilities, like the wastewater treatment plant, then it might be necessary to collect impact fees up front, Stranger said.

An audience member asked who would pay for the extension of the sewer line to the development.

“Yet to be determined,” Stranger replied. “But our opening position would be that it’s their expense.”

FlatIron developer Ken Madden also spoke.

He emphasized that he was also interested in providing non-motorized routes between Hamilton city center and the development.

“We’ve committed, in FlatIron Ranch, 13.5 miles of non-motorized trails,” Madden said. “I support it and endorse it. I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

The next step for the FlatIron proposal will be to go before the city’s planning board and zoning commission, Stranger said. But before that happens, the city’s staff has quite a bit of work to do.

“I think what we’ll be working on in-house is a list of the terms and conditions of which we would consider annexation of the property,” he said.

Stranger hopes to have it before the planning board and zoning commission in April or May.

Suicide at Stevi fishing access site

A man walking his dog at the Stevensville fishing access site along the Bitterroot River discovered the body of a dead person in a vehicle parked at the site. The body was discovered shortly after 4 pm on Thursday afternoon, February 28.

According to Ravalli County Undersheriff and County Coroner Kevin McConnell, the man was identified as 50-year-old Stevensville resident William Brownlee. He said that Brownlee died from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Brownlee has no immediate relatives in the area.

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